


Sataareth

by BelowBedlam



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Developing Relationship, Drug Use, F/M, Family Drama, Friendship, Rivaini Dalish, Rivaini People, Self-Harm, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-13 15:12:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7981141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BelowBedlam/pseuds/BelowBedlam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sataareth, qunlat : “That which upholds.” An enforcer, defender, or foundation.</p>
<p>A slightly different take on the possible repercussions of ‘Demands of the Qun.’  Bull is a hotter mess than usual, Kimani is the Inquisitor’s cousin, and the actual Inquisitor (Mahvir Lavellan) just wants everyone to get along.</p>
<p>(Inquistor-As-Companion AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which no one leaves the Storm Coast happy, and approximately one person leaves it high af (TW Drug Use)
> 
> thank you @thesecondsealwrites for looking over this. <3

Bull likes the rain; everyone thinks he’s this huge warm spot and that the southern seasons don’t faze him. This is true but he still likes a bit of chill, likes the icy rivulets sliding over his skin by the incessant, insistent rainfall of the Storm Coast. It’s not even storming, not really; there’s no thunder to really get his heart beating and besides, the crash and roar of the ocean is usually greater than the storms themselves around here.

There’s a bit of poetry, something the boss’s freaky cousin had said about being swallowed whole by those waves, by the way the sea whispers. He’d brushed it off as pretty words but Bull swears he can hear them right now, slipping between the rush of blood in his ears. Voices, and the bastards aren’t helpful in the least. They don’t even give him a hint as to what to do, and Gatt is going to decide for him if the boss doesn’t and the boss…she’s sensitive. She’s sensitive and she thinks she’s in love with Krem, but she’s also beholden to her duty. Consumed by it, by needing to make the best choice. Her weakness is, and has been since Bull has known her, in the crossroads.

This Inquisition has brought upon them so many crossroads.

Bull isn’t an idiot in the slightest. He realizes that not only has he been played, but he has also played himself. Bull has been backsliding for a long time. Bull has been lost for a long time, and he’s tired. Fuck, he is so tired. He’s been tired for years. He’s been tired since before he sat in a tavern somewhere in Orlais and decided that his name was The Iron Bull. These past years that have buffered the cold-fingered ghosts of Seheron, the taste of qamek and the ache of it in his veins, have softened him and stretched him too thin. So thin, he can hear his heart beating like a drum. That’s all he can fucking hear is the hopped-up thump of his heart in his chest. It _hurts_.

There is a considerable group of Venatori headed towards his Chargers, and the chances of their survival are slim. Dalish is a good mage but she’s not that good, and Bull doesn’t yet know much about the boss’s cousin or her little gang of mages she’d insisted on bringing. He doesn’t put much hope there, not from what he knows about Tevinter.

This choice - to sacrifice or save, and _what_ \-  is his, but he doesn’t have to make it. He canand does let the boss make it with her silence. Her kin is down there and still she holds her tongue. That makes them the same. 

So. They’re all gonna die down there, and it’s gonna redeem him.

The Venatori creep closer to the Chargers, and Bull steels himself; once they are dead, then it’s done. Once they’re dead he won’t be so lost. They’ll fight bravely, they’ll die well and they’ll have done their job, and Bull can find good Qunari solace in that fact. Watching them die will harden his resolve and re-train his tongue in the comforting verses. _Anaam esaam Qun_.

He doesn’t close his eyes. He will carry the deaths of his men for the rest of his life.

But then he sees it. Or rather, he sees _her_. A burst of white hair and angry orange flames as the boss’s cousin, Kimani, seemingly breathes fire upon the approaching soldiers, raising the tallest protective wall he’s ever seen as the Venatori rain their own magic on the Chargers. And Krem sees; even from this distance, Bull knows that his Lieutenant sees the Venatori and sees they won’t survive if they decided to fight back.

Bull thinks he sees the man look across the valley at him, as if he knows what had nearly happened to him was a choice, but Bull is projecting and he can hardly breathe, and all he can hear is a heartbeat that can’t possibly be his own, beating overtime.

The Chargers retreat; Bull suspects a few of them don’t survive because the barrier goes up in tandem with the first enemy spells, but he watches the wave of his men fall back with the time given to them.

Time she had given.

Bull frowns. He doesn’t understand. But then, the dreadnought hasn’t exploded yet. Hasn’t set the sky on fire.

…  
  


Kimani does not like the Ben-Hassrath agent, she does not like that Mahvir- the Inquisitor and her cousin- adores him, and she does _not_ like that Mahvir has brought them all to the Storm Coast for this folly.

She’s not a fan of the way her elder cousin has left them to die, either. Not at all.

This is Kimani’s first time on the Storm Coast, and she thinks it hilarious how aptly named the strip of rocky beach is. She pulls her oilskin tight around her and breathes life into its enchantments as she and the Chargers slip the grasp of death by a few moments and a protective spell that leaves her light-headed and bloody in the nose. She is weak from the shock and the force all at once; she’d seen Venatori where there shouldn’t be any more Venatori and boom, there goes the majority of her mana. Thank the spirits that it holds long enough for them to get away, because if they’d had to fight after that? Dead, and Kimani has not traveled this far south to die on a soggy strip of Fereldan coastline under a Chantry banner, trying to forge a fucking Qunari alliance.

Spirits, the _thought_.

Krem claps her on the shoulder, his tawny skin gone pale. He doesn’t let her go as they push on, not even when everyone jumps at the explosion over the waves, the fire seeping red into a gray afternoon sky.

“Hey.” She stops and pries his hand off because his gauntlet begins to hurt her. “Cremisus, er, Krem. You’re all right, you know? Do you understand?”

“I understand a few things,” he says grimly,“and I know I have only you to thank for my life right now.”

Kimani shakes her head. “Don’t do that to me. I don’t want it.”

“Don’t want what?”

“To be the light on your mountain,” she says. “We were a team and I saved the team. Because I like life too. But I’m not some benevolence you can owe your life to. It’s yours, you take it and do with it what you will. Don’t give it to me.”

“My lady,” Krem insists, holding her by the arms. Kimani swallows the urge to shove him because he is grieving for something; he forgets himself. She watches him stay the tears in his eyes. Or maybe it is the rain. “My lady, you’ve just shown us more loyalty than either of our superiors, and we hardly know you. I won’t give you my life if you don’t want it, but you _are_ a benevolence.”

The Chargers around them murmur their agreement, and Kimani stumbles into Krem as a wave of dizziness crashes into her like the reckless sea below them.

“I’m fine,” she growls, but she’s too weak to put up a fight as Krem lifts her into his arms. And honestly, being off of her feet feels so nice that she’s unsure she would if she could.

“Allow me this and then we’ll call it even,” Krem says curtly, marching his men on.

Kimani flings part of her oilskin over his shoulder in agreement, even though she knows it’s a lie.

…

Bull doesn’t understand.

Gatt is going on about betrayal, about how the Chargers were never going to hold that outpost. How Bull had failed in that loyalty, how he’d given them the easier job on purpose because he’d already turned. He’s already Tal Vashoth.

And that’s not true. That can’t be true. He’d…he’d been _ready_ to watch the Chargers die, ready to cement this alliance and his place in the ranks. It’d felt so good to hear Gatt call him Hissrad, been good to be back in the midst of a Ben-Hassrath scheme with other Ben-Hassrath. He’d been ready to greet the souls on the dreadnought, to speak Qunlat and fall into the simplicity of his people.

But now… this is not what is supposed to happen and he is not supposed to feel this way. The choice was made. He’d made it.

But now Krem is looking him in the face with so much rage that Bull has to fight against guilt and brimming relief that his lieutenant isn’t dead. He is so _happy_ that Krem’s not dead.

Fuck, this doesn’t make sense.

The boss is arguing with Kimani in elven, and she snaps back in Rivaini. They understand each other as if they speak the same language; the boss had described it as finding peace in the crossfire. They argue like a snake and its stupid, courageous prey, and in this dance the boss is definitely not the snake.

“Hissrad.”

Gatt is still livid; he snarls at Kimani when she curses him, and glares at Bull with poorly contained rage. 

“Hissrad, what do you have to say?”

Bull has absolutely nothing to say; it’s like his tongue has been replaced with lead, his common sense lost at sea. Dalish won’t look at him. _Dalish_ won’t look at him.

But she’s supposed to be dead, so.

There are too many eyes on him. Too many fucking eyes.

And he has nothing to say.

So he leaves, he simply walks away because fuck, he has been given something and he doesn’t know what it is, and he needs to get away from all of the eyes.

The Storm Coast is a wide expanse of hill and rock and valley; Bull makes his way toward a cropping of stone though he doesn’t move much faster than his usual gait, because who’s going to follow him?

“Chief!” Krem yells, and Bull walks faster. Dumb kid needs to turn back and be glad he’s alive. Take what he can where it lay, because Bull has nothing for him. He barely has anything for himself.

“Krem! Cremisius! _Lieutenant_!” Someone calls after Krem; Kimani’s weighty voice is like a roll of thunder, cracking with lightning strikes of fatigue. She’d expelled a considerable amount of energy in saving their lives and yet she’s chasing after Krem. Who is chasing after him.

“Fuck, Chief, say something! Don’t give me your back,” Krem growls, ignoring the mage who sounds so far away.

Bull keeps walking. He still doesn’t understand what is happening. They were supposed to die, and they aren’t dead and everything has stopped because the choice was supposed to be made.

But it isn’t. And that, he thinks as he focuses on his steps and the soggy terrain in front of him, is what causes him to flee. Because the choice should be made whether they live or not. Because he’d chosen.

But he hasn’t, and it isn’t.

Or maybe, maybe it is. Because his men’s retreat has caused a dreadnought to explode on the sea. A hundred qunari souls for a handful of _bas_ , and Bull isn’t angry with the Chargers. He’s just relieved that they live.

“Bastard!” Krem bellows, and Bull is a beat too late in realizing that it is a cry of attack; his lieutenant crashes into his back and they’re falling, shouting in pain and anger, their voices hiccuping on impact with the ground.

Bull sees red for a second in a way he hasn’t in a long time and it pushes him on; he climbs back to his feet and brings Krem with him. His hand around the kid’s neck is supposed to be a warning, because Bull can’t find words at all. But it is meaner than a warning.

Krem kicks at him with the points of his boots, but Bull holds on. Squeezes.

Then he’s yelling, screaming because his arm is on fire, flames licking just under his skin. and he drops Krem to swat at his arm. Fire, fire, but no flames to douse.

Magic. _That fucking w-_

Before Bull can finish his thought, he is yelling again at a blow to his shitty knee and Kimani slamming into him with more force than she should be able to wield.

But, magic.

He’s on his back again with this bitch on his chest and her stave pressed up against his neck, near to choking. He feels his head sink into the mud.

“Next one will be true fire, except this rain won’t put it out,” she pants, bending so their noses nearly touch. At the very least, all of her hair shields them from the rain while she threatens to choke him out and burn him to a crisp.

“Fuck you,” Bull rasps, eye rolling when she presses the stave harder. He grips her waist as if to throw her off of him, but he’s not quite sure that he wants to run the risk.

“Go ahead and call my bluff, then,” she goads him, pressing hard against his neck. Her amber eyes are dull in the storm, like hard stone in the dark. “Please, Hissrad, call _me_ a liar.”

Fair point. Bull loosens his grip on her in a show of good will, but she only retreats slightly when he makes a sound like he’s choking. Which he isn’t. He just wants a bit of quarter.

“You helped my cousin almost kill me,” Kimani says slowly, “Me and all your men. You don’t get to walk away and think about it. You don’t get to fucking ponder. You stand there and take it and be glad that’s all you have to do.”

She’s shaking; she’s still fatigued. But he won’t try her, because mages are like snakes that way. And she’s already shown herself to be powerful.

Bull tries to speak. “I regret-”

“-Oh, I _really_ don’t care,” she laughs hoarsely. “I truly, wholly, fully do not care. And you owe me nothing. It’s them you need to lie to. Craft a heart from what’s left of this facade.”

“Please, Lady,” Krem coughs. Bull closes his eye. He’d nearly choked the kid out, nearly killed him for a second time, and he’s still…fuck.

Kimani looks at Bull as though she can hear his thoughts. She looks like a sad specter, inhumanly white hair a dull glow around deep copper skin, strong features pulled down as she frowns. There’s a smear of blood just beneath her nose, staining the jewelry that hangs from her nostrils. More gold glints from between her eyes. She’d be pretty if she weren’t part of the reason Bull has fallen into a mess of himself.

The mage considers him a moment longer, and then shakes her head. “The Inquisitor wants him back. We need to get off this wretched beach,” she calls to Krem, pulling her stave away from Bull’s throat and climbing off of him. When he stays down, she jabs in him the stomach with the butt of her stick. “No time for this, not here. Let’s go. Get up,” she says to him, jabbing him again. “I didn’t hit you that hard.”

But she had; his knee is on fire. Still, he climbs to his feet and follows them back.

Krem and Kimani walk shoulder-to-shoulder like old friends; she leans heavily against him, her arm like a vice around his waist. Neither of them look back at him, but it’s not like he has anywhere else to go.

*

Later, Gatt tells Bull that he has to send his report and wait to see what they say about it because a dreadnought has been lost, and it is technically Bull’s fault; his men didn’t hold their position.

“This doesn’t help your case, Hissrad,” Gatt says, smoking a harmless tobacco pipe as they sit in his tent. He’d started it in Seheron, smoking to calm his nerves. “They already think you’ve defected. You said these _bas_ soldiers were loyal to a fault, and look.”

“The mage isn’t mine,” Bull tries, though it falls flat even on his own tongue.

“But the troops that retreated instead of standing to fight are. They were only to move on your signal. But they moved on hers.”

Bull scoffs. “You put in that report that the strange mage made them do it, and they might kill you, too, for talking stupid.”

Gatt laughs softly, nodding. But just as quickly, the smile fades away.

“You could kill your second-in-command. For insubordination. That’d help,” he says seriously, rubbing his chin,“because right now it just looks like you told them something different than you told me. Same way those reports were supposed to be secret. Same way our involvement was supposed to be secret.”

“Thought you understood, Gatt.” Bull is not killing Krem. He’s already failed at that twice in one day.

“I can understand the missives but officially, this is too much. Maybe kill your second, and kill the witch as well,” he adds thoughtfully.

“That’d be causing war between us and the Inquisition.”

“Well, we sure as fuck aren’t allying with them, now. And the Inquisitor’s kin is part of the reason we lost a dreadnought. A dreadnought, Hissrad. So you tell me that two _bas_ souls - A vint and a mage, no less - aren’t disposable enough to try and pay for a hundred qunari and one of our most prized vessels.” Gatt watches him through a haze of smoke, his expression schooled to a blank slate. So, that’s how it is; even Gatt expects the worst from him if he’s hiding behind his mask.

But then, this is a test and Gatt is testing him even now. They’d tested him by sending Gatt in the first place, and by the nature of the mission. Gatt had known he’d give his boys what seemed like the easier task, and somehow Gatt had known that there would be an impasse. He’d known about the Venatori on the ground. Or he’d hoped.

Shit, Bull can’t think straight, can’t follow the veins of logic embedded beneath it all. But he knows that this is a test.

And he knows that he is about to fail.

“I’m not killing anyone,” Bull says quietly, meeting Gatt’s eye. “Not the vint, not the mage.”

His old friend scoffs. “Not even to save your ass.”

“Not even to save my ass.”

“Well, then,” Gatt leans forward, blowing smoke out his nose, “you need to get out of my tent so I can write my letters. You need to go back to Skyhold with your Inquisition until I get a response. And you need to watch your back.”

Bull sneers. “Gonna try and kill me, Gatt?”

“Me, personally? No,” Gatt shakes his head, chuckling. “That’d be silly, Hissrad. You can go, now.”

So Bull does go. He can’t really do anything else but go.

Outside, the rain has stopped and they are far from the coast. Their camp is grassy and lush, the onslaught of post-rain insect swarms warded off by their campfire. It’s late, but the fire blazes; Kimani leans into it as if she isn’t afraid of oblivion, warming herself like a cat. The flames cast her hair bright orange, dancing shadows over an expanse of cloudy tresses. She’s clad in her breast band and a pair of soft, loose pants that he recognizes as Rivaini. The firelight dances off of her bruises, too; a big purple one blossoms over her right shoulder, the one she’d rammed into him with. Lighter, hand-shaped ones circle her waist where he’d held her.

Any other day and Bull would high-tail it over to where the Chargers keep their own fire, but he is not welcome. Stitches is probably tending to Krem’s throat, Dalish certainly won’t look at him now, and between Rocky and Skinner, there’s probably an assault planned if he comes too close. Arrow in the neck, explosive to the face, something like that. The boss probably doesn’t want to see him, either. Dorian and Solas are most likely commiserating over their hate of qunari, and Bull can’t stomach the sly cut of their derision at the moment.

“The Inquisitor has declared the campfire a neutral zone,” Kimani says to him, “so if you want to sit, I technically can’t hurt you.”

Bull regards her a moment and is met with the most droll stare and a tiny shrug. He sighs, but comes to sit on the opposite end of her log.

“I’m surprised you’re here, then.” She’s got on the top of her head, a spot she’s missed.

“I’m more surprised that you are here,” she says, turning her gaze back to the fire. “But I guess no one wants to talk to you.”

“Yeah.”

“Serves you right, you were gonna let those Venatori kill us,” Kimani shrugs, and Bull realizes she’s chewing on something. “Like sacrifices to the dreadnought god.” She goes dramatic, lifting her hands to the sky. “Which would probably piss my gods off.”

Bull watches her chuckle to herself, and frowns. “You’re taking it freakishly well.”

“Please qunari, I’m livid. But I’m clean and fed and hopped up on blood lotus so I can find a bit of laughter in my cousin’s betrayal. And all for a qunari alliance. Ha! Shit’s thinner than piss and just as foul. If Mahvir succeeds in this war, she’s just going to have to deal with qunari bullshit later down the line. You all know no true allegiance but to your own. _Anaam esaam Qun_.” Her voice drops low, and she glances at him.

Bull isn’t sure if he should be offended. This time next week he might officially be on the opposing side of that phrase.

So, he just states the obvious. “You’re high.”

“As a Fereldan kite, my boy,” Kimani giggles into her hand. “Because you’re all mad and you’re all scum and I can’t believe I’ve joined this mess. Not the Chargers. The Chargers are good, but you broke them. You broke them and they’re good. I hope Mahvir comes to her senses and kicks you out; we can leave you here with your brethren and be done with qunari, spirits help us.” She pauses to swallow around the wad of what is definitely blood lotus in her teeth.

If the boss releases Bull from her service, he’s almost certain that he’ll have nowhere to go. He won’t have his order and he won’t have his Chargers. He’ll probably start killing kids like the-

Fuck, he can’t say it. Not yet.

“I’ve never seen a qunari look so sad.” Kimani is suddenly standing in front of him, over him, wavering on unsteady feet. Up close, Bull can see his hand prints on her perfectly, two bruises marring the smooth skin of her soft stomach.

“Yours is worse.” She presses a finger into the swell of his stomach, and he looks down at the splatter-shaped bruise. “And you deserve it. Unfortunate that I didn’t break a rib.”

“You could’ve. But your aim was off.” Bull looks back up at her. Her breast band is secured with a knot just above her ribs, and the tail ends of the fabric brush his face. She has come closer than she probably intends.

Kimani gives him a slow, inebriated blink. “It won’t be, next time.”

“Won’t be a next time,” Bull smiles mirthlessly, leaning back. “I think I’ve accidentally put myself on your team.”

Now it is Kimani’s turn to step back. She looks like what he supposes a fire spirit from some story would look like, soft and sharp and ablaze with her element raging behind her.  Firelight does her many favors.

“What I know of the Qun is that it does not make room for accidents.”

Bull doesn’t like this mage. She makes too much sense under too many influences.

“No,” he says, looking down at his feet; he feels small.  “I guess it doesn’t.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the rule of “talk shit, get hit” is applied, Iron Bull at least gets to kill a giant, names are declared, and the guilt intensifies. 
> 
> Ah, guilt.

On the way to the Storm Coast, Kimani had watched Mahvir and her companions quietly, gaging what they became once out of Skyhold’s relative comfort. What their characters were. Along with the Chargers and Iron Bull, Mahvir brought along two more mages; Dorian Pavus, and the other _somniari_ , Solas.

Kimani likes Dorian, he is a boisterous man and very polite and speaks a few words of the Queen’s Rivaini. Solas is strange, but useful.

Altogether, this small slice of Inquisition is cohesive; everyone understands their place and when its time to put in work, no one falters. How a team should be, no matter if everyone enjoys each other’s company.

But the Chargers have stolen her heart, Krem and Dalish and Rocky in particular. They are warm and delinquent and tough. Kimani can forgive them a Ben-Hassrath leader because they themselves are good. And they are kind to her, and less burdened by the plight of this Inquisition. It is easier to be around them, even easier than being around Mahvir sometimes. Kimani has only been in the Inquisition a month, if she counts correctly, and it is not enough time to become accustom to the weight.

Only a month in, and look what has happened.

“Kimani, please. It’s been three days. We must speak.” Mahvir appears at her side after they pitch camp. She is small and sharp, her hair braided back. The shaved side of her head is overgrown, the designs that mimic her vallaslin lost in wild, new curls. Her many, studded earrings shine in the afternoon light, her long ears flicking nervously.

Kimani looks down at her beautiful cousin, and scowls. “Can’t. Still want to hit you.” She grunts like a caveman, her hands imperiously on her hips. Make herself big. Defense mechanisms.

“Then hit me. _Hit me_ ,” Mahvir exclaims, throwing her arms in frustration. Their companions turn to look, but none of them understand Rivaini. Only the sudden excitement in Mahvir’s voice. “Hit me as many times as you need so that I may speak to you again. Please, we need to talk. Don’t do this.”

Where they’ve set up camp is green and open, the chill of coming autumn shaking the trees still green and towering above them. Their tents are like a curve around the campfire, unlit. Their mounts enjoy a bit of space and a lot of grass within the protective barriers that Dorian and Solas cast; their magic thrums the air and puts Kimani on edge instead of at ease. Give it more time, and it’ll be familiar enough to leave the hairs on the back of her neck alone.

Kimani cuts her eyes at Mahvir. “I haven’t _done_ anythi-”

“Kimani Patris,” she snaps, using Kimani’s ancestral name as a warning. “We are grown women, don’t play this game.” She takes Kimani’s wrist in a claw-like grip and begins dragging her away, into the trees and damn her, Kimani is still running on Rivaini rules, still a bit frozen from Mahvir calling her by both names that she lets herself be dragged along.

Once they’re out of eyesight, thick bushes obscuring them from view, Kimani finds the sense to snatch her hand away. “You have some fucking nerve-”

“Like the void I do,” Mahvir retorts, glaring. “I have _some_ nerve. I am leading a war, Kimani. A _war_ , not a skirmish for land or against another clan, a war. For _Thedas_. I am trying to do what is right for all of us and I’m sorry…I am sorry that I…” her voice breaks and her glare softens, brown eyes going slick with the threat of tears.

“Do not cry.” Kimani paces in the the tiny clearing, trying to burn off some of her anger. But spirits, it slicks her skin like a pallor. “You don’t get to cry about it. Not this. You did it and it was done, and had I not seen what I’d seen, had I not had the strength? We’d be dead. You know this. And you were okay with it.”

If their family knew? Spirits.

Mahvir squeezes her eyes shut, knuckling away tears as if she thinks the same thing. “I…I had to make a ch-”

Kimani is sometimes a base human being. Sometimes she is nothing but hunger, and lust, raw mana and rage, nothing but the aches of her body.

Her fist cracks against Mahvir’s cheek with little warning for either of them, and Mahvir cries out, stumbling back until she trips.

“You blighted bitch,” Kimani hisses, rubbing her knuckles and blinking away hot, angry tears. Her first tears of this whole ordeal. “How could you _do_ that?” She looks down at where her cousin has fallen.

“ _Fuck_.” Mahvir’s face contorts as she rubs her jaw, smearing the blood dribbling from her mouth. “I’m sorry, Kimani. I’m sorry.”

“Are you certain?” She turns to a sound in the bushes, but no one appears. “Are you sure? Because we can keep going.”

“I think you’ve made your point, serah.” The Iron Bull appears on the path they’d taken into the trees, silent as death and looming like the same. Kimani squares her shoulders against the quiet, unmistakable threat of him.

“Oh, d’you think so, Iron Bull?” She dares him- _dares him_ \- to move.

“Bull!” Mahvir hold a trembling, halting hand out to him. “Bull, stand down. Do not interfere.”

Kimani looks him over with derision, but Bull doesn’t seem interested in her anger, only tired and standing anyway. He raises his hands in surrender, takes a step back, but doesn’t leave.

“Patris, please. Kimani. Kimani, I need you. I need your help.” Mahvir rises to her feet, cupping her bruised cheek with one hand. “When this is over, I want to go home. With you; to Ostwick first, to the clan, and then Rivain. I want them to be proud of the both of us. _I need you to be on my side._ I’ve been alone with this for so long. _”_ She comes close, taking Kimani’s hand with her gloved, marked one. And she knows Kimani too well, knows that she will squeeze her hand back. Knows that home and family and homecoming are things Kimani knows too well, had craved for years in their youth.

Damn it. Kimani releases a breath she did not know she held.

Mahvir’s mouth is still bleeding, a thick path  splitting her lip.

“Ah, fuck me,” Kimani groans, running her hand through her braids. “Come here, girl. Come here.” She slips her hand beneath Mahvir’s on her face, and glowing with healing magic. “Damn elves and your thin bones.”

“Damn brawler’s blow. As if you sling brick instead of spells.” Mahvir closes her eyes as the magic seeps into her.

You shouldn’t have let me hit you.”

“Yeah I should have,” she laughs, hissing at the pain it causes. “That pain clears both ways.” She slips her arms around Kimani’s waist. “And had our places been changed I’d want a crack at you myself. Ooh,” she moves her jaw, wincing. “It still feels like you pulled it though, little cousin.”

“I hit you with my left. My left swing is still shit,” Kimani laughs. She wipes the blood from Mahvir’s split lip and presses her thumb there. “It’s always funny, you calling me little cousin when I’ve got a good head on you.”

“And I’ve got three years on you. Rules are rules, _ahatki_.”

“Whatever.” Kimani bends so their foreheads touch. “Lucky bastard.”

“Says the lucky bastard.” That bit of banter is a favorite of theirs, and they both smile. “I am glad for this.”

Kimani doesn’t know if Mahvir means methods of reconciliation, or that she survived the ordeal on the Coast to reconcile at all. Either way, she agrees.

“I’m not a badass simply for _show_. Sometimes I have to defend myself, you know.”

“Kimani…I don’t know how better to apologize…”

“You can’t, Mah, that shit was heinous and you should be ashamed. But we’re good; we will be good. I’m not…going back home, or anything. I’m here, thank the spirits, and you’re here. And we’ll do better, or else I’m actually going to beat your little ass until Elgar’nan himself stays my hand.”

Mahvir laughs, crying now. But this is alright. These tears she can have. Kimani sighs and pulls away from Mahvir’s face and judges her work; she is by no means a healer, but she gets by.

Her cousin touches her cheek gingerly, and shrugs. Then, she looks around Kimani to where Bull still stands. “See? It’s fine.”

Kimani looks over her shoulder and sees Bull watching them with a strange expression; he nods slowly, folding his arms.

“Glad to hear it, boss. Serah,” Bull nods to them, and turns back towards camp. Just like that.

Mahvir watches him go, her smile fading. She shakes Kimani. “You mustn’t be cruel to him. He only followed my order.”

“I wonder if he’d have followed so willingly if you had made another choice. He’s still Ben-Hassrath.” Kimani watches Bull disappear back into camp, the wide plane of his back gleaming in the moonlight. It is hazy, but she remembers their exchange that night by the campfire, her breath reeking of blood lotus. “I don’t want to like him.” And yet even now she considers him with more than disdain. A curiosity.

Mahvir shrugs. “You don’t have to like him. But do not be cruel to him, he’s dear to me. And he will have paid the most for this before it’s done.”

“Why do you say that?” Kimani raises a snowy brow, hooking her arm around Mahvir’s shoulder as they walk slowly back to camp. Fireflies blink in the dark, tumbling along cool night breezes; one lands on Kimani’s shoulder, content to join them until she flicks it away.

“I believe they are going to reject him. His people.”

“…Really?” Perhaps it’s not so outrageous, with a sunken ship and however many aboard it dead.

“He is acting strangely. Too quiet, too sad. I’ve never seen him sad. Not even when some of our soldier friends died at Adamant,” Mahvir says softly. “And I understand enough qunlat to know “tal-vashoth” even if Bull had never mentioned them. What?” She looks innocently at Kimani when she balks. “I didn’t acquire all of this stealthy powder shit to not eavesdrop on my bodyguard and his qunari brethren after I royally fuck a deal. Creators, I’ve not completely lost myself.”

They break bush and are greeted with warmth and firelight; There are few people around said fire though few have actually gone to bed. Nosy, wanting to see just how the Inquisitor and the hedge-witch (which is technically incorrect, but Kimani keeps quiet) emerge from the underbrush. Kimani meets their eyes, and many of them look away. She wonders if she truly seems so menacing, or if southerners just are cowards.

Iron Bull doesn’t lower his gaze. Firelight turns him into the kind of villainous spy she hears tell about in Rivain, come straight from Seheron with fog-warrior curses still tripping their tongues.

Kimani makes sure no one is quite too close to the fire, and coaxes it to roar, flames licking up at an unattainable sky.

Bull breaks gaze to watch them reach, but Kimani swears she feels his eye on her as she slips into her tent.

…

They run into a bit of trouble on the way back, and Bull gets to kill a giant. He stands at its head once it’s down, fully engulfed in the smell of sweat and blood, the sting of magic and charred flesh, breathing hard with his grimy maul on his shoulder. His muscles ache and his leg throbs and he probably needs to sit down, but he’s going to bask in this. Best thing that’s happened to him in _days_ , and he finds solace in the face of a dead giant.

Morbid, yes. Badass, _yes_. Bull tips his head back, begs the sky to burst so he can smell like thunderstorm and the faint iron of washed-away blood. The clouds hold their own, however, fat and dark-gray. Still, he holds out hope.

Another cloud floats around him; Bull turns and sees Kimani skim the giant’s perimeter, just watching it with her hands clasped at the back of her neck. She reeks of magic, her hair spattered in blood and hanging damp with sweat and grime and humidity. Her light armor is undone and fluttering in the pre-storm wind, pant legs rolled up her calves, out of shoes and socks, and stalking in the grass.

Bull makes a confused noise; she glances at him and it prickles his skin. Her eyes are adrenaline bright, a sharp flush darkening copper cheeks and creeping down her long neck. She’d been a restless surge of energy in the assault, hitting hard enough to make him glad he’s only had to feel her blows once. A bit more strength than mages he usually sees, but she’s still soft thing, even if she is tall and sturdy.

He realizes he’s watching her and she’s watching him watch her; she pulls a face, and snorts.

“Still caught up in it, huh? The rush.” She presses a hand to her chest. “Mahvir thinks its some sort of condition.”

“I simply don’t get the same thing,” Mahvir shrugs, looking over their kill like an instructor over a student’s work. It’s true that the fight doesn’t excite her in the same way; she is clinical and light. She looks over the physician-like cuts of her attack and sees a good, dedicated attempt. It’s still a rush, the way she needs to look over and assess, but it doesn’t leave her flustered and frenzied. Bull thinks it’s hot, and he’s told her so, that precision. Sharp little boss.

“Don’t let her fool you; it’s the south that makes her stern,” Kimani laughs, shaking out her hair. With a few flicks of wrist and a leather tie, she pulls her heavy tresses back into a controllable cloud. Bull watches her wipe sweat from her neck, from the exposed stretch of her chest, shivering when a breeze blusters through.

“Nonsense, it is training and maturity, and-ah!” Mahvir cuts herself off with a shriek, gripping her marked hand as the Anchor’s glow spills through the seams of her glove. “Fuck!”

Everyone turns to her; everyone watches and sees that the pain is at its usual level, and everyone settles into the knowledge that they’re about to go close a rift. Bull and Krem share the quick, knowing glance they’ve developed over the last few months before they remember themselves. But it is a fleeting moment of normalcy that Bull lets linger over him. Back to that. He wants back to that. He misses his boys already.

“Mahvir?” Kimani comes close, hands hovering over the Anchor, face lost in worry. “What is it doing?”

Right; she hasn’t seen the Anchor in action yet and _shit,_ is it scaring her, softening the sharp planes of her face.

“Trust me, it’s fine,” Mahvir hisses through gritted teeth.The Anchor crackles, snapping; another few seconds and she’d be past it, the sharp pains she’d described to Bull dulling to a thud until they found and closed the Fade rift. Bull has lost count of how many of the damn things they’d closed already. He thought that the Storm Coast was clear but then, they only thought they knew what they were doing with all of this mystery apocalypse shit.

Mahvir gently pulls herself out of Kimani’s grasp, getting the distance she needs when her hand acts up and walking away from them all. Bull had told her a bit of distance is good, to clear her head even when the pain is physical. Because there’s a surge of fear there, too, every time the Anchor reacts.

“Let’s get Solas and Dorian; Bull, Krem, Dalish, let’s go get this over with. Come on _ahatki_ , bout time you see,” she calls behind her, not even bothering to look back because she’s the boss and they know the drill. Bull knows enough Rivaini, and Mahvir has said it enough that the endearment _ahatki_ is familiar to his ears. Sister. Sweet.

He turns to go after the other mages, and sees that Krem’s already halfway there. So, he comes up beside Kimani, who has not moved.

They aren’t friends. She tolerates him on Mahvir’s request and maybe he enjoys when the wide beam of her smile makes it to him, even accidentally for a second, but they aren’t friends and she doesn’t really like him. Still, Bull is pretty sure she isn’t going to torch him when he puts his hand on her shoulder.

She doesn’t relax, but she doesn’t move him.

“Hey,” he says, squeezing her reassuringly, “she’s fine. This has happened countless times, and you’re about to see what we’ve done countless times before. Gonna warn you, though; there’s gonna be a lot of demons.”

Kimani considers this with less uncertainty than Bull expects, even from a Rivaini mage. She looks at his hand, then looks up at him. “You protect her?”

“I do.” Bull nods. “We all do. No matter what.”

“You would have protected her from me, had she not stopped you?”

“Yeah, serah,” he chuckles, shrugging. “As best I could.”

“As best you could,” she echoes. For a moment, she simply watches at him, regarding him from boots to the tips of his horns, and Bull feels stripped and judged. He doesn’t know what she’s thinking and it irritates him suddenly, the endless feeling of her sleepy gaze. Like she knows something about him that he hasn’t given; that’s how she looks at Solas, too. She smiles at Dorian. She smiles at the damn necromancer.

“Stop calling me serah,” Kimani says finally, brushing his hand from her shoulder. “And do not call me Trevelyan. Silly name is little more than a privilege pass, owed me by a guilty father. My name is Kimani.”

“Kimani.” The name is easy on his tongue, a rumble of breath and soft stops.

“Exactly, Iron Bull.” Her skin warms, burnished copper and flush on her high cheeks, but he doesn’t think she realizes.

“I like it with the “The” in front, actually. The article works for me.” If he’s honest, he’s beyond correcting people at this point. But in his head he calls himself this still. If he keeps it, maybe he can pretend he is anything else but fucked.

“Iron Bull” is a name. “The Iron Bull” is a designation.

Kimani nods at this, turning to follow after Mahvir and the Chargers, who cast curious eyes their way as they pass with Dorian and Solas in tow. “Alright, The Iron Bull,” she says, as she leaves. “Fair enough.”

At the rift, Kimani a singular force. She looks at the demons that spill from the sky and and grins with rift energy striking too close to her feet. She runs at them like a wrestler, low and grounded and base, her magic dancing over her own skin before she unleashes it on them. There’s something brutishly feral there; Bull almost gets hit because it catches him off guard, but he turns in time to see Krem’s maul rip through the terror demon’s skeletal chest. Krem’s eye are fighting bright and alert, his skin red with exertion. He glares at Bull for a moment, catching his breath, before they break away for the rest of fight. 

Bull thanks him quietly. Bull wonders why he didn’t just…

Overall it is fairly quick; Mahvir snaps the rift shut and keeps her feet afterward, which is always a good sign. She’s so small, never mind that she’s fucking ripped, that Bull knows the Anchor is just too much sometimes. But she’s a trooper.

He’s relieved for that,and relieved that this rift is a fairly simple fix, considering some of the ones they’ve closed in the past. No one’s even hurt that bad, just a couple of scratches. So Bull feels relief. But between Kimani and Krem, and the way he finds himself watching them carry each other back to camp, arms over each other’s shoulders like old friends, he is set helplessly afloat in a sea of awe, fear, and needling, wheedling guilt.

The road back is already long as it is.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which titles are confirmed, some folks get froggy, other folks jump, there is fighting! Bonding! Maraas-lok! Cliffhanger, hanging from a cliff!
> 
> TW Violence, Blood mention

A letter doesn’t reach Bull as they ride back to Skyhold. Not a letter.

 Mahvir decides about halfway home that they will spend a night in an inn and so Bull spends time in the inn’s tavern, drinking watered down ale that is probably not too shabby at its full strength but now just tastes like sour water. He watches a woman spell out just how much she wants to fuck him with the way she cuts her eyes and runs her hands over her rosy bosom. Her hair falls in brunette ringlets that bounce with her tits when she laughs too hard at another patron’s joke. Bull doesn’t feel too bad in ignoring her advances because she’s a woman on a mission, playing the field. _Somebody_ is going to scoop her up before the bards switch out for the final time tonight, it just isn’t going to be him. He doesn’t even have an urge to suppress, and it’s been weeks.

Fuck, had it taken so long to get to the Coast? He’s not horribly partial to Skyhold, but he’d like to be back in his shitty room by now. He has a project waiting for him in that hole in his ceiling, was able to get himself enough glass and a fairly skilled artisan to turn it into a covering. A skylight. He’ll like it a lot once it’s finished.

But he has to get there and first, it seems he has to sit through another painful encounter with Gatt.

“You coulda just traveled with us,” Bull mutters, watching the slinky elf slide into the seat across from him.

“With that witch that kicked your big ass? I don’t think so,” Gatt chuckles, sipping from the flagon he’s brought to the table. “I’ll make this quick.”

“Thank Koslun.” They both already know how this is going to end. But the Qun is all about formalities.

Gatt watches him a moment, sipping more ale. His hair is combed back and braided at the temples. Must have taken him forever to get that straight shit to hold.

“Will you reconsider killing your Lieutenant, as well as that Rivaini _basra_?” He asks, never taking his eyes off of Bull.

“No.” His fingers drum on the table, nervous energy he doesn’t care that Gatt sees.

“Do you consent to coming under my custody and the custody of my men, so that we can escort you back to for re-education?”

Bull’s heart hammers in his chest, but his voice is calm. His mind races, _shit shit shit_. He could do that again, couldn’t he? Endure that pain, that forgetting, hollowing, stripping?

He remembers telling himself that the pain was good. Healing. But he can’t bring himself to think so now.

“No.”

“Then you are declared Tal-Vashoth. By midday tomorrow, you will be officially denoted as such by our superiors in Ferelden. By the end of the week, your records in Par Vollen will be dealt with.” Gatt doesn’t sound sad, simply disappointed. He also sounds resigned to it, the loss of a brother in both sense, north and south.

“And when should I expect assassins?” Bull smirks to deflect. Gatt only shrugs.

“Even if I knew I wouldn’t tell you, Tal-Vashoth.” He says something else, lower and in qunlat, and Bull raises his eyebrow.

“Your accent is getting better.” He stands from the table, grateful that his feet move when he tells them to. They’re done here. “You’ll sound like a proper qunari before the end.”

Bull turns his back on Gatt and finds it funny, in a shitty way, that a viddathari is the last thing he’ll see of his people until they try to kill him. He’s a madman now, after all.

He walks away, because Gatt will find more than a few things to say to him, to hurt him, if he doesn’t. He remembers how they used to spend downtime making up new shit to sling at Tal-Vashoth before they killed them. Burning insults that hurt _him_ even though he was nowhere near Tal-Vashoth in the jungles of Seheron. Not in those early years. Not in those glory days.

“The fuck was that?”

Bull nearly walks into Krem, and his heart skips. The kid looks ruddy, a drink or two in, and deliberate in his blocking of Bull’s way. Krem beckons behind Bull; when he turns, the table that he and Gatt shared is empty.

“I just watched that same qunari agent from the coasts leave off that table. I watched you and him speak. The _fuck_ was that about?”

Krem isn’t drunk, but the pink in his cheeks burns red, suddenly. He glares up at Bull and waits for a reply. Bull stalls a moment to look beyond him at the table that the Chargers had inhabited earlier in the night. Now, only Dalish and Skinner remain, and they watch intently.

Bull shrugs. “Gatt was just informing me of my new position.” He watches Krem narrow his eyes.

“Yeah, and what’s that?”

“I’ve told you about Tal-Vashoth. Now I get to be one.”

“ _Well_.” Krem makes a face that says he’s not surprised. “Guess that’s what happens. Save the wrong lives, get the boot. But you didn’t even save the wrong lives. You just fucked up.”

“Listen, Krem-”

“Look. I’ve tried talking to the Inquisitor about changing up the contract she has on us. Separating it out, but she won’t hear it. Naturally. This is a good job, Bull. I’ll deal with you if I have to, but you’re not my chief.”

Bull thinks it progress that Krem speaks to the Boss at all. He can only imagine the shit he’d given her when she tried to apologize. And Mahvir had definitely, _definitely_ tried to apologize.

Shit, Bull will, too. “I’m sorry, Krem. Sorry she didn’t change the contracts. Sorry you feel that she has to.”

His lieutenant is young. 24, 25. Not a kid, but the way pain softens his face is childlike.

“You weren’t even going to give us a choice,” he says softly. “All the time we’ve worked together, and you take away our autonomy then. You know, it was quick but I bet if we’d had a heads-up we could have pulled a strategy out of our ass and at least cut them down until you all made it to us. But they were right on us by the time she saw them. Couldn’t do shit about it then but run or die fighting. She really is the only reason we’re here.”

She. Bull had watched her take a man with her to bed about an hour ago. Probably a stonemason, as there was a quarry around here.

“You chose to serve under a qun-loyal agent,” Bull says honestly, reaching to rub his opposite shoulder. “Which means your autonomy was never actually there. That’s the truth of it, Krem.” He watches the way anger pulls Krem’s face this way and that. Uncertain; his emotions have strong arms and weak knees. “I didn’t lie to you, not once. And I’m not lying to you now when I say that if I had a chance to go back and make this right, I would.”

“You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t be here if you had a choice.”

Bull scoffs. “We’re both here because I had a choice.”

“Bullshit.”

“Funny. They wanted me to kill you and the Trevelyan woman as payment for the dreadnought. If you notice, the both of you are still alive. _She_ is probably very alive right about now.” Bull juts his thumb at the ceiling, upstairs.

Krem scowls, but Bull can tell that he believes him. It doesn’t seem to help much.

“So you’re staying.”

“Looks like it. And I want to make it right, Krem. I don’t fucking know how, but I want to.”

They’re in the middle of a tavern, both with drinks in their hands and weapons at their hips. The tavern watches them, some head-on and some out of peripherals, and waits. Big qunari and an angry man in nice armor. Maybe a vint, maybe got the armor off of a vint he killed. They’re a bit of a spectacle.

Krem deflates a little, but Bull isn’t hopeful.

“You’re a piece of shit.”

“Yeah.”

More staring. More scowling. Bull might not be hopeful, but he is patient.

“Fuck this. I’m going to bed,” Krem says finally, lumbering towards the upper level of the tavern with little more than wave of his hand.

Bull watches him go with a sigh, thinks about how easy it is to fall into your own cracks. It’s easy, dark and cool and away from all of the decision-making. Bull’s going to have nothing but decision-making to do, now.

An older man stops Krem.

“Oi, that brown wench was with you, yeah? With all the…” he waves his dirty hands around his head to denote Kimani’s hair. Krem folds his arms, nods. “Well, she’s out there fightin’. Fightin’ Ox-men.” The old man glances at Bull.

Krem turns back to him too, gives him the foulest look, accusation written all over it.

Fuck. Either she’s fighting vashoth or she’s fighting whoever Gatt had brought with him to follow Bull until they made their move.

With his luck it is most certainly the latter, even though he hadn’t seen her come back downstairs.

“We gotta go get her. The Boss will skin us both,” Bull huffs, brushing past both men and stepping outside. The tavern doesn’t need to know how a surge of nervous energy has just hit him in the gut, or how he walks fast because more than one qunari Ben-Hassrath against only one human mage was not a fight, but a lynching. The night is dry, the crickets loud, the moon like a bright, open mouth in the clear, dark sky.

He hears qunlat and angry Rivaini to his left, hears Krem’s footsteps behind him, and unhooks the ax at his waist. Krem unsheathes his sword as they round a corner into a dimly-lit alley. A rat scurries over Bull’s foot. Three qunari loom around Kimani, who stares one down with enough arrogance to warrant her noble last name. Her back is to a wall; there might as well be claws where she has blunt fingernails.

“We’re not here for you, _basra_ , but we can be,” the one says coolly, eyes flitting up to where Bull and Krem stand. He bares his teeth, and Bull sees sharp, deliberate and darkened points that bring back memories. “Anyway, we’ve found him.”

Kimani’s eyes dart his way. Relief quirks her brow, and only then does Bull know how fear could look on her.

Bull scoffs at the agents. “Three big ones, huh? So you mean business.” He bobs his weapon playfully as he sizes up each man. “And all qunari-blooded. You _really_ mean business. I’d have been fucked with just this little ax.”

“Not here to talk, Tal-Vashoth.”

“Oh, I know. Here to consign my soul to dust, blah blah. Well, let’s get on with it.”

Moonlight turns everyone ghostly, starlight not so strong that it can reach down to touch them. The cobblestone beneath Bull’s feet feels strangely even, but he knows better. Needs to watch the way these streets dip and rise. The shops around them are as dark as the night, quiet.

He _might_ have been fucked against three of these guys if tonight had gone any other way.

But as it is, one of them is already dead.

Kimani doesn’t really…move, but she _does_. Bull still sees her standing where she stood, and yet he also sees her run into the qunari farthest from them on her left side, the blur of her a connection between the image and the woman, and run him through with a long knife that winks in the dull light before it’s buried in the agent’s stomach. And then his chest, in between the _vitaar_ , over and over.

There’s a second where everyone is frozen, where everyone else watches the mage kill the qunari, before shit breaks loose.  The biggest one runs at Bull like a damned bull himself, shouting _anaam esaam qun_ and striking for Bull’s neck like he wants to lop his head off. Bull ducks it, hacks at the agent’s side with his axe once, twice in quick succession before he has to dodge another swing. It is slower this time, the agent’s hand twitchy on the hilt and slick with blood, the confidence in his voice eaten by pain as he repeats himself. _Anaam esaam qun_.

So Bull runs at _him_ , mindful of the sword so he can knock it loose and catch it easy. Quick, Bull steps into the agent, shocked by the impact, and turns once for momentum so he can run him through to the hilt. Clean and bloody.

Death is a rush on both ends; Bull can feel his blood rushing in his ears and he can see the life rushing from the agent’s eyes, the shock seeping from his face to leave it soft and empty. One gurgling cough that gets blood and spit on Bull’s face.

Kimani screams suddenly, painful and shrill, but there’s no time for freezing now; Bull takes back his sword, kicking the body away, and turns to the last one.

Krem is keeping up like he damn well better, meeting the agent strike for strike, but he’s still not quick enough to trip up a Ben-Hassrath. Kimani is collapsed against the wall of a dark building behind them, curled into herself, and Bull knows. The poison, they got her with _qamek_.

Shit.

“Maneuver three, Krem!” Bull bellows, and watches Krem mouth the command before falling into the step, crossing behind one foot and bringing the agent’s weapon down low. Fight low, so he thinks to defend low.

The agent is trying to pay attention to them both, but he still thinks he’s winning because he thinks he killed Kimani.

The Charger motion for down is very simple; you make the horns, and you turn them downward. But it has to be fast because the signaled Charger can’t spend too much time looking at you, and there can’t be too much time in between their ducking and you doing whatever the hell you’re going to do.

Bull swings that well-made, beautiful qunari sword, and lops the last agent’s head off as the poor fuck is turning. The shit flies like a damn _bird_ , the freed neck fountains blood, and Bull has to keep moving; he rushes over to Kimani, one hand deep in his pants pocket to fish out a vial of antidote. He’d brought a few doses with him for the Storm Coast, in case someone got hit, and keeps it on him by force of habit; It is long-known by his people that the Venatori adopted the poison, most likely off of a captured qunari, and began manufacturing it as best they could. Theirs was weaker, but still could kill qunari in large doses.

Kimani is hit with that good stuff; even as she has a furiously glowing hand pressed over the wound, a cut across her chest, she fights against a foaming mouth.

“Alright, come on,” Bull hunkers down on one knee, grabbing her by the chin when she shrinks away from him. Pain and fear contort her face, darkened with unruly red. “Open up or you’re gonna die in an alley. You don’t want that, neither do I. Not a good death.”

Kimani blinks away tears and opens her mouth, lets loose drool and foam, but no blood. That’s good; Bull makes her spit, tips her head back and empties the vial into her mouth, closing it and coaxing her to swallow. She chokes a little, hits her fists on Bull’s chest, but he doesn’t let go until she’s done it.

Krem comes close, gauntleted hand on her knee as she groans, eyes shut tight as the antidote burns the poison away. She beats against Bull through the worst of it, her other hand a claw on his shoulder.

“You’re alright,” Bull says calmly, setting his teeth against the dig of her nails. “It’s almost over.” He takes the edge of the scarf she wears and wipes her forehead, then her mouth. “It’s just pain, it’s good pain. It’s healing pain.”

She stares at him, her glare softening into something truly frightened when the antidote turns her cold, then finally into something tired and wet with tears when she feels her warmth again.

Yeah. The chill is scary, especially if you’ve known near-death before.

“There you go, you made it.”

“What was that? What _was_ that?” Her voice is hoarse and she slumps forward. “What was that?”

Krem reaches for her and winces in pain; Bull shakes his head.

“I got her. I can get you too, if you need it.” It’s supposed to be a joke, but Krem just stands up.

“I think I can manage.” He moves his left arm, and grimaces. They’re gonna have to wake Stitches up. He’s not going to like that.

And the Boss is going to be so pissed. Shit, she’s gonna be mad.

Kimani doesn’t protest to being carried. She shakes like a leaf in his arms, one hand curled around the strap of his harness. When they return to the tavern, the old man that alerted them stands near the door; He’s a little confused about the “brown wench” being in the arms of an “oxman,” but he nods gruffly at her apparent safety, and shuffles away. The rest of the tavern has wound down in the time they’ve been gone. The hunting woman is missing, must have found someone suitable, good for her. The last bard of the night is lively, so they haven’t been on long. The innkeeper tends his bar and he seems serene, so there hasn’t been any trouble.

It hasn’t been very long.

Bull turns to Krem, sees how grimy is face is in the light. Sees better where he’s been hit. Always that damn shoulder. “You need to get Stitches. She needs to eat. I’ll take care of it.” _It_ _’s my fault, anyway_ , he thinks with a pang of guilt. _Again._

Krem ignores him and looks over Kimani, worried. Bull knows that look, had been the subject of it before, of Krem eager to devote himself. And she is a lot prettier than Bull, even before he’d lost the eye. Easier deity.

“Go get that looked at, Krem.” Kimani lifts her head, and Krem relaxes, nodding. Seemingly smiling back; Bull can’t see her face for all the hair. “He didn’t kill two qunari to turn around and hurt me.”

Bull stiffens. That’s what Krem’s thinking. Even after Bull telling him he’s Tal Vashoth. After what just happened.

“Krem-” Bull starts, but Kimani thumps him hard in the chest. She shouldn’t have the energy, but it shuts him up.

“If you bleed out in this tavern I’m going to kick your ass,” she adds softly, laughing when he nods begrudgingly. “I’m okay and I told you, I’m not the light.”

“I know,” Krem says, conceding. “You’re still my friend. But if you say…”

“I do. Go get stitched up.”

With a final look between her and Bull, Krem sighs and goes on his way. Waking Stitches was going to be another, small battle.

Bull chooses a booth and slides Kimani into the long seat; as he suspects, she slumps into it, a relieved sigh pulling her near to laying across the bench. Bull sits across from her, orders the stew because her throat’s a scratched-up mess and there’s probably nothing else ready this late, and whiskey for himself until she croaks “two whiskeys” and proceeds to hack up a lung.

Bull shrugs at the maid. “Two whiskeys.”

“It’s half water anyway,” Kimani says after the maid leaves. She rights herself, leaning heavily on the table. Her hands are stained with blood and dirt. “And southerners don’t know how to drink.” She smooths her hair back, heedless of the filth, tying it with a piece of twine. Bull wonders how many of those twines she just has hanging out on her person, waiting to tame that mass of white cloud: dingy white now actually, spattered with dirt, but still. Still a cloud, as close as he’ll ever get.

She raises bloodshot eyes to him without warning. He’s of the opinion there needs to be a warning before someone with eyes that _demand_ so much decide they’re gonna fix on you.

“This is the second time I’m fucked up because of you.”

Bull doesn’t think he’s supposed to speak; the silence hollows between them, and Bull imagines a cave, dark and vast, before she speaks again.

“But we won’t count it, since you killed most of them and saved me from dying in an alley. That was very motivating, by the way.  And whatever was in that vial was foul.”

“I’ve never known a sweet antidote,” Bull says.  Always bitter; living, the modes of living, choosing how to live? It all is bitter. Bull tastes copper on his tongue.

“Fair enough.” Kimani wipes the corner of her mouth with her cleaner wrist; there’s nothing there. Her lips are cracked, and she licks them, dragging her teeth over the bottom and wincing at the pain she knew was coming. “A qunari attacking another qunari, yelling ‘victory in the Qun,’ must mean that one of them is truly not a qunari.”

The stew comes then, as well as the whiskey; both of them sit back as the maids arrange everything in front of them. Their bowls steam; Kimani sniffs at hers, and shrugs. She flicks a nail at her whiskey mug.

“You’re right,” Bull says.

“I know.” The way she says it seems like that’s the end of that particular conversation. Works for Bull; he doesn’t really have any words beyond that, anyway. Skin’s still too new, tongue still learning and un-learning.

“How’d that mess start?” Bull knocks back his whiskey and she takes a big gulp of hers. No one coughs. It really is weak shit.

“One of ‘em called me, ah, said I belonged with a muzzle and in chains, and I bit the bait,” Kimani says after she spoons some stew in her mouth. Bull follows suit. Eh, it’s nothing special. At least it’s hot.

“You thought you could take on _three_ of them?”

“I wasn’t thinking. I was just minding my business, taking a walk after…well, I was walking and this big bastard says I belong in chains. So I mouth off. They buck up, I buck up. A little back and forth, then you and Krem show up. One of them, the one you beheaded, cut me with a blade, a little poisonous blade. And then everything went hot.”

“It’s called _qamek_.”

Kimani narrows her eyes. “I thought that was only for…I have known Tal-Vashoth, and they told me…”

“It was for me, but you pissed him off.”

“And you just…keep the antidote on you?”

Bull shrugs. “I keep a lot of things on me, don’t worry about it.”

“No, I suppose I don’t have to.” She lifts her bowl to her lips, and drinks. “Mahvir supposed they would reject you.”

Blow to the chest. “The boss is keen.”

Kimani considers this, then takes another spoonful of stew. She rubs at her throat, and Bull sees a bruise he hadn’t noticed before, watches it roll as she swallows. She eyes her whiskey mug and decides against another swig.

Bull pulls out his flask. “This’ll give it a kick, if that’s what you want.”

To his surprise, she snorts. “Brought that all the way from Par Vollen?”

“I make it myself."

“You don’t,” she shoots back, reaching out for the flask. Bull smirks, and hands it over. “Do you really?”

She unscrews the top, and instead of pouring some into her bottle, takes a shot of it from the flask. Bull sits back, smirk spreading into a smile. “Vashoth, children of Tal-Vashoth, make it in Rivain. Theirs is sweeter. Our Dalish also make their own brew. More cinnamon and cloves, like our tea. This,” she grimaces, but takes another, smaller sip, “tastes like metal and…nutmeg?”

Bull shrugs, amused. “Gotta make do with what you got. Nah,” He waves her off when she tries to hand the flask back. “Keep it. I’ve got another.”

“Oh…thank you.” She takes another sip and closes it up, sets it in her lap. Warmth is back in her cheeks, from soup or alcohol, or both. Bull eats more of his stew before it goes cold.

The bard sings something soft, now. Something easy, to lull the tavern to sleep. It’s a good tactic, and the bard has a good voice; they rock with their song, hips swaying like their own lullaby. Kimani and Bull are two of only a few lingering occupants, all winding down themselves. And the bard, they sing and sing; a fairy-tale tune, about love and gods. Andraste, and a happy ending. Bull doesn’t know if that’s sacrilegious or if it even matters, but he likes it. He’s always liked southern legends, and legends in general. Even under the Qun, they had them and even under the Qun, they sometimes grew wings.

 _I can keep those_ , Bull thinks. _Keep those and keep language. Keep memories_. Seheron, he keeps on his body, always.

He thinks about the dead qunari in the alley. How one of them was definitely a veteran of that wretched island. Teeth sharpened to fangs, dyed with ink. Scare tactic for people who believe in too many things. Bull rubs his tongue against his own two, man-made fangs. The ink’s long been gone, and the teeth used to be longer, but he keeps those, too.

“If you want Krem’s forgiveness, you have to stop trying to apologize,” Kimani says after a while of watching him.

“I know my lieutenant,” Bull says too quickly and he shows himself; Kimani raises her eyebrows.

“Sure you do.”

There’s no heat in the words, though they are sly and cut deep. Bull sees a new weariness wash over her, and knows her bit of energy is waning. Time for a long, fitful sleep.

For both of them.

Bull pushes his bowl away. “Take another shot of the _maraas-lok_. It’ll help you sleep easy.”

She laughs hoarsely, reopening the flask. “ _Maraas-lok_ will not help me sleep easy.” She knocks one back, then offers the flask. “It’s polite.”

Bull tips his empty mug to her and she pours more than a shot. They drink together. Afterward, she gives a very affirming nod like they’ve signed a pact, and Bull can’t help but feel the same way.

“Now, if you don’t mind. I need a little help.”

Bull carries her up to her room, deposits her in a chair next to an empty, still-damp basin and a half-filled bucket of water. Bull keeps two buckets, surprisingly never uses them all, so he offers her some of his; she can’t possibly clean all that hair _and_ her body with what’s left in hers, but she declines sternly enough that he doesn’t offer again before he leaves. He hears her whimper quietly as she pulls off her boots, when she thinks he’s far enough away not to hear her, and Bull closes the door firmly behind him.

In his own room he wipes off quickly, resigned to cleaning himself better in the morning when he can bother with fire. He lay naked atop his sheets, arms folded over his chest, looking up at the black stretch of ceiling. Only then does he feel the ache in his chest expand like a bubble. Like a painful fucking bubble, swallowing up his lungs, his ribs, spilling down into his stomach. He feels distended even though he isn’t. He feels bloated. He lets his mouth fall open to give the pain an out it will not take.

 _It_ _’s done. It’s real._

He lay like that, breathing slowly through his mouth to keep tears at bay, until he falls asleep.

…

 

Kimani goes to sleep after she cleans herself and rubs mint paste on her chest. She doesn’t bother with clothes, hobbles to bed. Her body is so weak, aches everywhere. Breathing hurts, but the cooling mint makes each breath easier. _Maraas-lok_ warms her full belly. The _qamek_ antidote leaves a taste like bile on her tongue, even after her late, second dinner.

The south has proven to be exciting. Infuriating and painful, and a bit cold, but exciting. She has already nearly lost her life twice.

 _Mahvir, you will owe me a kingdom once I_ _’ve gotten you through this ordeal. A large kingdom, and an orchard of muskmelon. And a new bone pipe from Seere._

When she sleeps, she decides to walk the Fade though she does not need to soothe Mahvir tonight. It is part of her self-imposed job to keep her cousin from demons, to lay easy paths for her rest. But tonight, instead of her cousin, Kimani peels through layers of Fade and consciousness until she finds where The Iron Bull dreams.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dreamers gonna dream, ft subtle sexual tension.  
> TW for brief violence and blood mention.

Everyone gives to the Fade, even if they do not know it. Not just dreams: consciousness, precious memory, residues of fear and hope and anger. Perhaps if it was just dreams, playing out behind invisible barriers, there would be more living _somniari_ in the south; it’d be much easier for Circle mages, poor things, to keep away from the teeth beneath the Fade’s veneer.

Kimani isn’t certain. She only know what she’s been taught and what compels her every time she chooses to walk the Fade.

Tonight he compels her, and his dreams taste like sweat. Salt.

Kimani has stepped into more than a few qunari heads; diplomats and Ben-Hassrath around Afsaana might not know her personally, but she has seen some of their quietest thoughts. Others, too: humans and elves. Dwarves are a different story that she does not know how to tell. But she can read a qunari like a book, easy.

Rain! His dreams taste like rain as well, and the way water tastes sipped from leaves. He dreams of jungles and Seheron; this place she is in now, thick underbrush and swamp-rotted wood and fog, can be nothing other than Seheron.

Lots of fighting, and blood. But that’s not what he _tastes_ of. Not violence but exertion, exhaustion, and cleansing. Kimani feels tired simply being in his dream space. There is so much on his mind, it’s a wonder if he ever remembers dreaming at all. Too many ghosts haunt him at once, in communion. She walks through his warzone with light steps and alert eyes.

She also finds that the Iron Bull dreams a lot about the Fade, which is odd until Kimani remembers Mahvir telling her about their adventures at Adamant Fortress. It is something she would have both loved and loathed to see, the Raw Fade; on one hand, it’s the Raw Fade. On the other? It’s the Raw _fucking_ Fade and no living thing should know how other realm feels on their skin.

“A qunari in the Fade,” Kimani muses, rubbing her chin. “That must have shaken you from here to the next age. Poor bastard.”

 _But Tama, if it gets in my head, how do I get it out?_ A child’s voice cries in qunlat, and Kimani knows enough of the language to follow. The voice is disembodied; it seems to be the underlying chant to Bull’s memory-nightmares of Adamant. Definitely not a good experience for him.

It also means he probably thinks that someone like her is a demon. Which, outside of places like Rivain, is understandable. The way the Chantry abuses mages is unspeakable; they do not understand that suppression of magic is not a solution, but a slow death.

Shit, maybe they do. Maybe they just don’t care.

Kimani expects to see immediately see the Storm Coast in Iron Bull’s dreams; it is all that Krem has dreamt about since the incident, but Kimani cannot find those memories in the Bull as easily as she’d hope. This man that Krem loves so much. She passes through the things he unwittingly leaves in the Fade like mist, arms crossed tightly to fight the urge to tinker with him. She’s just here to look.

But she can’t find what she’s looking for, and wants to delve deeper; for her this is as simple as descending a stair, and as difficult as keeping away from food when one starves. Unconsciously, she licks her lips. Unsurprisingly, her stomach growls.

In Rivain, Kimani’s mentors are hesitant to confirm her as a Seer. They say she is powerful in her dreaming and her skill is apparent, but she relents to her base instincts with little control. They say that this wouldn’t bode well for a Seer. The relationships are too delicate; the woman must be as strong as the spirit that chooses her, and not an inkling less. Not an inkling _more_. And her hunger, they fear, could bleed into the spirit like an infection.

And that is how abominations are made.

But here in dreams, she’s nigh unstoppable. She keeps her eye out for pride demons.

“I don’t understand you,” Kimani murmurs as she parts the layers of Bull’s offered consciousness. “I don’t understand you, but they love you. Mahvir loves you. The people you were willing to sacrifice love you.”

He keeps more childhood memories at the forefront of his mind than most, and he was a kind child. The name “Ashkaari” brings with it a warmth that his other names do not. Kimani leaves most of these alone; she’s not a complete savage.

And then, she finds what she wants.

They’re on the Storm Coast and Iron Bull has his hands around Krem’s throat. Krem is dressed in his armor, but Bull looks like a true qunari warrior, _vitaar_ red and vibrant when lightning brightens the sky. It’s raining a lot harder than it was when they were there, but that’s normal. Everything is always more dramatic in dreams.

For example; Kimani is there as well and her dream-self seems to be dead, sprawled in an uncomfortable-looking position at Bull’s feet. Her hair covers her face for which she is grateful, but it is undoubtedly her. Though, she’s in only a breast-band and some trousers, which is strange.

In the undercurrent of the dream, same as how she heard the child Ashkaari in the undertow of Adamant, she hears that elven qunari’s voice.

_Kill your second, kill the witch. That might help your case._

And then, Bull’s voice: _Not even to save my ass._

But now, he squeezes the life out of Krem as the poor man claws at Bull’s arms.

Kimani draws closer as Bull drops Krem’s limp body to the ground and he stands there, staring between the two corpses. His chest heaves; she realizes he has hair in this dream and a lot of it. It plasters over his shoulders and chest, heavy with rain.

So this is what he keeps away, this wheedling nightmare, below the surface. Kimani watches him watch the dead bodies. When he takes a panicked step back, she looks down too.

Krem moves his leg: barely, but enough. And, Kimani can see her dream-self’s own chest rise with a struggling, desperate breath as if she’s resurfacing from a long, deep dive.

Not dead. They should be dead, it shouldn’t be hard for a man as big as Bull to crush two human necks, but they aren’t quite there.

Another voice in the undercurrent: _From what I know of the Qun, it does not make room for accidents._

“Oh,” Kimani says aloud, honestly startled. She takes a small step back herself. “That’s me. I said that.”

A crack of sudden thunder slows to a rippling, moseying _boom_ that echoes instead of clapping its fury. The rain slows, the sound of it warps.

This is the sound of a _somniari_ fucking up a little.

Kimani looks up and sees this dream Bull staring dead at her. With two eyes. She moves over to the side, and he tracks her. She moves to the other side. And still.

He sees her.

“Fuck,” she mutters. “Guess I’m done here.”

She begins pulling at the threads of Bull’s dream, and they really are like threads in a blanket, exposed in places where the dream-and the dreamer’s will- are thin. For Bull, it is right where they stand. She’s going to have to wake him up. It’ll be too much for him, with the way he’s looking at her now like he’s been besieged with ghosts, to regulate himself if she leaves him sleeping.

“Sorry about the headache,” she says in a soft, singsong voice as she rapidly unravels his dreams. For a moment it looks like he’s going to speak, but then he disappears; he’s awake. The dream will follow soon after, turning into mist in the Fade, nothing but shifting colors without the dreamer to hold it together.

Waking herself up is much simpler. Just a bit of focused thought, and-

She’d fallen asleep in a funny position: On her back, her head nearly falling off the edge of the bed, her pile of pillows, bolstered by her traveling pack, abandoned. Groaning, she shimmies her way back to them, reaches for her headscarf and re-ties it over still damp braids. Shivering a little, Kimani flicks her wrist at the brazier and pulls her thin blanket around her shoulders. Warmth billows into the cold room; the walls seem greedy for it. Kimani certainly is. She coaxes the flames hotter, and thinks about the Iron Bull.

Well, his dreams. She thinks about his dreams.

If she had any doubt of his authenticity, she thinks she now might be able to afford him a little more faith. True faith. Qunari do not send assassins as warnings, but conclusions. And they certainly do not seen three qunari-blooded this far south for anything less than that.

She runs her finger along her poisoned wound; it is still tender, stitched together with magic but left enough alone so that her body can heal at its own pace. The antidote Iron Bull had given her was swift and harsh; her throat is still raw, not helped by the _maraas-lok_ she drank, and the wound throbs, still tender to the touch. But she isn’t dead, which is most important. She breathes deep and the mint paste drags cool air into her lungs; in the night it has smeared over her wound and her breasts, and she smells sharp. It is a comfort.

“Three qunari,” she laughs to herself, pulling her knees to her chest. “Could’ve taken them.”

She could have taken two, easy, but she’s not at full strength and hasn’t been since the Coasts. Travel is wearing on her and now, the residual evil of this _qamek_ poison will add to the burden. Kimani know she should not have walked in dreams, should’ve just taken her _nesomni_ , the herbs that block her dreaming magic, and slept soundly. But she is ever-curious.

The Iron Bull had been a strange qunari even when he was still truly a qunari. He is simply a strange man.

Kimani scoots over to the nightstand and takes the flask he gave her. The leather case is good, designed with same patterns that decorate his harness, and smells like him. How he smelled carrying her. Sweat and just his skin, she supposes. Earthy, a bit sharp. It’s nice.

She takes a small drink of the remaining alcohol, and nearly chokes on it when someone knocks on her door. Heavy, deliberate, slow.

“A moment,” she calls out, surprised by how her voice cracks when risen any louder than a whisper. She grabs a ratty night shift from her pack and pulls it over her head as she walks to the door.

Kimani comes up to the center of Iron Bull’s scarred chest, and that is what she’s met with when she opens the door; she has to crane her neck to meet his blood-shot eye, and stumbles back.

He scowls down at her, accusation sharpening an already sharp face. Just the edge of anger.

“Easy.” Kimani raises both hands, taking a step back. “I guess Mahvir filled you in on me.”

“Right after you got to Skyhold,” Bull says gruffly, “But she said you were good.”

“I am.”

“Right.”

“I _am._ I just needed to see.”

“Tonight not enough for you? Three dead and a vial of antidote not enough, huh.” He squints at her, sniffing the air. “Smells like you been casting. That how that works? Cast a spell and…invade?”

Kimani winces. “I trespassed. I won’t do it again.”

“Have you done it to others?” Bull is not convinced.

“Yes.” The advisers, Krem. Dorian. She was going to work her way through the rest of the companions once they returned. Not Solas; she would not cross another _somniari_ , particularly not a lying, apostate elf of no clan and name. No, let him dream his ancient dreams and let her reinforce her barriers to keep the bald man out. “I’d have done it to you earlier, but Mahvir asked me not to.”

“And then the Coast happened.”

“And then the Coast happened,” she echoes dryly, “and while I believe my cousin at her word-”

“-After a fist to the jaw-”

“-I don’t fucking _know_ you, Iron Bull. Perhaps you can conjure comfort in others, but I do not trust who does not prove to be trusted. And I only know one true way to decide.”

Bull stares her down, sneers a little to try and make her wilt, she figures, and then whistles low. “Talk about trust _issues_.”

“I’ll talk about them with Krem,” she spits back, and she only regrets it a little after saying it and seeing the way Bull looks like she’s slapped him. Possibly more than a little; she has a flash of the gentle way he’d treated her, after fighting the qunari assassins. Had she been a little less…dying, it would have shocked her more. She has known gentler giants, and yet.

His hands flex, releasing pent-up energy, and she can nearly feel it. Tense and unsteady, like his damned dreams.

He’s scared. He’s just fucking scared. Kimani can only imagine what it’s like, not knowing magic and having magic put upon you. And dreaming all of his dreams…he was scared before she went snooping, so she hasn’t helped at all.

 Kimani softens her voice. “I’m grateful to you, alright? You saved my life, even though you owed me anyway. But I don’t throw trust around and you would understand that. Being a spy.”

Anger festers, but Bull breathes through his until he can grunt in what Kimani assumes is agreement.

She sighs, running a hand over her face. She’s too warm, a warning Bull wouldn’t have benefited from had her own aggression spilled free. He’d just see fire, feel it on his skin.

“Iron Bull,” she says, “I will tell you this, in hopes of it being a comfort: I’ve seen much worse than fatigue, and that’s all you seem to be. Fatigued. Tired and confused.” She shrugs. “You can fix that.”

He looks tired now, like he wants to go back to sleep but doesn’t want to dream of mages in his head. And his eye, she realizes, is redder than it should be.

“Here. You’ve broken blood in your eye.” She waves him into her room, watching sympathetically as he hesitates. “Come sit down, I’ll fix it.” She goes to drag a chair into the center of the room, his footsteps eventually a heavy creak behind her. When he sits, it’s like an old man with bad bones; sometimes the after-effects of dreaming do that, too. Sometimes her own joints protest at simple movements on waking.

Tonight, though, she just feels sated. Sore from the night’s ordeal, but sated from dreams.

Kimani peers into his face, moves her hand slowly to his forehead so he doesn’t spook. If he even spooks. “Do you usually break blood like this?”

“No, just…bones. And the other eye,” he says gruffly. Kimani doesn’t know if she’s supposed to laugh, so she doesn’t, just tips his head back to better see the damage. Broken vessels are another result, often of hasty awakenings. And, potentially his own frustration upon waking. Either way it’s her fault and an easy fix, easy way to apologize.

 He has a lot of scars on his face, too. The skin around his eye-patch is thick and rugged tissue, twisted like tree roots. A deep scar mars his lips, reaching from nostril to chin. A streak of silver, a wound that healed softly, wraps around his massive neck.

“I’ve got a lot of scars.” Bull blinks slowly, turning his face in her palm to see her better. “The patch covers the worst of them.”

“Can’t be comfortable to sleep in.”

“I don’t sleep in it. I just don’t like what’s under it being stared it when I’m trying to talk.”

“Hmm. Talk, or scare a little woman in the middle of the night.”

“ _Little woman._ Tuh. Pretty sure I can’t do shit to scare you,” he chuckles.

“Pretty sure I’ve seen worse things that what’s under your patch. But I get it.”

Bull grunts. “You’ve got a few trophies yourself.”

“Not as many as you,” she says, pressing her thumb just beneath his eye and her other fingers to his temple, summoning up a bit of healing magic. He hasn’t said anything about the headache, but she can nearly feel it when she touches him.

“Well, there’s more of me to hit. But you know that firsthand.”

Kimani laughs. “Yes.”

They fall silent, and Bull closes his eye as the magic does its work. Kimani notices a fresher bruise on his shoulder; he flinches when she touches it, then settles under her hands. Might as well heal that, too. She’s not a proper healer, not by any means, but the magic soothes her. So much of what she wields isn’t so serene. She wouldn’t call healing magic simple, but it is calm. Knowing that she repairs skin and bone and tissue, blood vessels, muscles…it makes her feel powerful in a way her other magics don’t.

Perhaps she should have trained with the healers. It wouldn’t have been any easier, but it would be a different toll on her spirit.

“Sorry you had to see that particular dream,” Bull says after a while.

Dull flashbacks of her and Krem on the ground, near death. “It’s fine. I’ve seen worse.”

“Of yourself?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, that’s disturbing…still. Know that I don’t want to hurt you. Not even subconsciously, that was-”

“I know. I know what it was. And I know you don’t really want to be explaining yourself to _me_.”

Bull scoffs. “Well, it isn’t like I have many ears to worry these days.”

“Does Mahvir not-”

“-The boss doesn’t need to worry about me,” Bull cuts her off firmly. “That’s not part of the deal, and she _would_ worry. But I don’t need to burden you with my shit, either.”

“It’s not a burden.” Kimani pulls away from him, examining her work. His eye glints, flickering between gray and green, clear as if he’d never been stressed in his life. “I am a Dreamer. I like dreams; I relish in them.  I know how to read them-I must, for my own safety. And you? You really are just tired, Iron Bull. It’s fucking with you, the choices you’ve made. Eventually it won’t,” she shrugs, folding her arms. “And you will build your foundation.”

“…or I won’t.” He’s watching her like he’s looking for something. Expecting something.

Kimani can only read minds when she is in them; she can only tell him what she already knows. “You’ve already started. Three bodies, and whatever you did to bring them here.”

“Huh.” Bull hasn’t stopped looking at her like he’s trying to pry her open, pull something out of her. He is too big for the chair, but he sits without care. Slumped. Almost relaxed. The contrast jars her. “Three bodies.”

“Mhmm.” She goes to sit on her bed, warmed by the fire, and tucks her feet beneath her. Get a bit of distance. He seems to take the hint.

“You’re much more interesting than Solas,” Bull says as he stands, rolling his shoulders. Kimani allows herself to watch the muscles in his arms, his back, as he lumbers towards her door. The way his hastily-donned pants sit low on his hips and spill out of half laced boots. “And the Boss really does need you. She wasn’t just talking out of her ass.” He throws a look over his shoulder. “I hope we have a true understanding, now. Or rather, you understand me, and I just sort of…vaguely know what you’re about.”

Kimani smiles, looks down at her knees. “You don’t need to know about me, Iron Bull.”

“And if I just want to?” He turns then, sitting one hand on his hip. “That not allowed?”

Amused, she raises a snowy brow at him. “Not necessarily. Ask me again with a bit more distance. Anything you want. Maybe I’ll answer.” She raises her hand in farewell and Bull nods, flashing a smile. He pulls the door closed after him, boots thudding away, and that’s the end of that.

Both sleep until morning. No one dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So nesomni is a headcanon thing i came up with back when that builds off of the fact that the wiki says somniari have herbs that both help them dream and help block their abilities. We don't get any actual recipes or names, so I took the liberty. It is very important in Kimani's journey as a dreamer in any universe.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bull gets back to Skyhold, partakes in a couple kinds of therapy, and gets his chance to make good.  
> ~Slightly~ nsfw.

Skyhold is a welcome sight, as much of a home as anyplace else and even more so now. Bull drops his things on the floor of his neat, bare room, looks up at the hole in his ceiling, looks over at the paper-wrapped glass he’s going to figure out how to cover the hole with. His things are all in order, his bedspread without a wrinkle even if the bedding itself it a bit old and worn. He’d bought a black rug off of one of the merchants who’d set up shack in the keep; it is supposed to be a bear shag, but Bull has his doubts. Still, it keeps his feet warm.

He starts a fire in his hearth and chews on the last of his nug jerky. Good and spicy.

The rest of their journey back had been uneventful and quiet. Bull had gotten exactly one good sentence out of Krem if he strung all of the disparate words together, and a few frowns from the rest of his boys. That was good, a start.

And he’s feeling…better? Maybe. Maybe that’s what it is, because he makes it back to Skyhold without too much issue. If he has nightmares, he only remembers a few of them. He makes the boss laugh, and he feels like laughing himself. The boss is feeling better as well, but she has options: Krem might not necessarily forgive her, but the person that really matters, the one she needs, has.

Bull cannot relate, but he can survive. Mahvir couldn’t, not the way she’d lit up when her cousin arrived at Skyhold. So it’s good for her. He’ll figure something out.

First, though, he’s got a bit of catching up to do. Therapy, if you will.

Mahvir teases him about his many lovers, about the things she hears but only the things that don’t upset her. Bull knows that for the most part, the people he fucks keep the trysts to themselves. He knows why, but silence is easier to ignore. The ones who like to chat about their night(s) with the Bull fall in one of two categories; those who just like talking about sex, and those who like bragging about the time they were brave enough to bed a qunari. Those who fall in that latter category make Mahvir upset, and Bull can always tell when she omits something untoward she’s heard about him. Always; he admires her for it, for trying to save his feelings. It’s adorable.

Brigit falls into neither category; as far as he knows, she keeps what they do to herself. And really, no one needs to know that one of the better cooks at _Herald’s Rest_ is really into getting her ass eaten. But shit, she has a great ass. And the payoff is spectacular; she’s nothing but soft curves and sweet moans and just lets him have his way after. Very docile, though she is firm on her boundaries. Sweet-smelling and plump and eager. Bull always has fun with Brigit; she’s a sweet lady, if a little quiet. She likes her space when they aren’t in bed, but she never outright ignores him like some others do. And sometimes he gets a great meal out of it, which, heh, perks.

And then there’s Hamar, and Hamar likes to wrestle and lose. The soldier is thick and muscular, a bit soft around the belly. A bit like Bull, in smaller form. And without horns. He likes to flex, and Bull likes to watch, and then he likes to watch those muscles jump as he grinds himself into the beautiful man’s ass. Hamar has long, auburn hair that brings out the red in his dusky skin, and he smells like sage. Bull likes him because he can’t quite place where the man is from, and it’s part of the game that puts a sly smile on his face. His accent is so Fereldan that anyone else wouldn’t think it learned. Bull likes a bit of mystery when it’s not going to hurt him to keep it.

And there are others, there have been others, but Bull finds Hamar first on his return to the fortress. The soldier isn’t on patrol until evening, and they spend a couple hours horsing around, knocking up against wall and floor and mattress. Hamar will stick around and cuddle for a while, and he always leaves definitively, confidently. No lingering to see if Bull will ask him back, no strange back-and-forth to force the same. Bull likes that, likes people who know what they want. He always smiles at Bull before he leaves which is nice, too.

Brigit he can’t find until much later, and not for nearly as long, but she’s eager and loud and fun for the time they do have. She’s in a great mood, and she has a great smile, and Bull makes sure she’s still smiling when they’ve finished. She’s pale as a ghost and Bull makes sure she’s a bit ruddy by the end, a bit of flush to give her soft cheeks some dimension. She rides him like a horse master and Bull comes with a grin. Gives her a big kiss before she leaves.

Sometimes, he picks them very well.

“It does me well to see you smiling,” Mahvir says later, when they sit together in Herald’s Rest. “I’m guessing you had good company?” She dresses plainly, and still with style; tan tunic and tan riding pants, with matching boots and gloves. Always with the gloves. Her hair falls over her shoulder in a tight braid, tied with brown leather cord.

Bull nods. “Very good company. And you look at ease, yourself.”

“Company, though markedly different from yours I think,” she says with a smirk. “And it’s just nice to be back. Nice to have a proper wash. My hair is actually clean.” She smells like a bucket of flowers, fresh and light, and the aroma wafts as she throws her braid behind her. “I assume you’ve heard nothing else from the Ben-Hassrath.”

“You assume right,” Bull says, settling in. She’d been livid when she learned about the assassination attempt, and about what had nearly happened in that alley. Bull had to talk her down from the heights of her anger, had to try to wrangle someone who does not like to be wrangled.

She ended up crying with a death grip on her knives. Who she’d planned on knifing, Bull still doesn’t know.

“And you’re alright?”

Bull chuckles. “Yes, boss. As alright as I was the last time you asked. I’m good. I’m really good, today. Shit regulates, and we keep moving.”

Mahvir tries to suss something out from him with her sharp gaze, and Bull just re-plays the highlights of his day in his head until she seems satisfied that he’s not lying. Which is kinda funny, considering, heh.

“I suppose so,” she relents. “I suppose I simply worry too much. But you know yourself. Still, haven’t seen you with the Chargers.”

“Now _that_ , I can’t control,” Bull shrugs nonchalantly, and that gesture is such a lie. “I can only wait, and hope.”

They both look over at where the Chargers congregate; Bull already knew a few of them had been eyeing him and Mahvir for a little while, but it’s a surprise for the boss. She waves ‘cus she’s polite and ‘cus she’s the boss, so they wave back. Krem even puts on a little smile, but it’s stiff as a board.

And then, she crooks her finger at him. _Come here._

Krem freezes. His eyes flick between them, his hand tightens on his mug, but he pushes back from the table. Fixes his jacket. Comes like he’s called, and stands like he’s in full armor, waiting for an order.

Bull wishes that she hadn’t, really. Let Krem enjoy his evening. But it seems where Bull relents control, Mahvir picks up the reins and pulls. That’s something he needs to keep watch for, especially in a few weeks when they head over to Halamshiral.

“Your Worship,” Krem greets her, nodding curtly at Bull. “Iron Bull.”

Rough, still; Mahvir frowns.

“I wonder how we can repair what is broken between you.”

“ _We_ cannot, my lady,” Krem says firmly, squaring his jaw. “It doesn’t concern you, no offense.”

“Even if I had nothing to do with what happened on the Storm Coast- which I bloody well do- any issues with the members of my team is my business.”

“Not if it doesn’t affect our purpose. Which it will not, I’m better than my emotions. Lady,” Krem adds stiffly, his irritation apparent in how it creeps red up his neck. Bull knows the kid is stubborn, that’s what’s gotten him so far. That’s why he’s Bull’s guy. But it isn’t really…helping him now. It’s just backing him up with shit.

“I never said you weren’t, Cremisius,” Mahvir says gently. “I’m only saying that it isn’t fair to give Bull anger that also belongs to me.”

Again with this. Bull cuts his eye at the boss. She’s gotta stop with the guilt harboring.

Krem isn’t moved. “Worship,” he begins, “I am fully aware of who I’m angry at, and why.” He stares at her hard then, until she falters a little. A weakness, because she cares for him and it softens her. “Whatever I “give” to Bull is whatever he deserves.” Finally, he looks at Bull straight. “Outside.”

Bull blinks. He has an urge to lighten the mood, but it’d be a failure. And Krem needs to see that he’s serious about this making up business.

“Go on, Bull.” Mahvir pours what’s left in his mug into hers; when had she drained her cup? “I’ve got more than a few friends to keep me company.”

“And here I thought what we had was special,” Bull jokes as he stands. Mahvir pats at his stomach with a tiny hand, gives him a smile that wishes him luck.

He thinks that he’s gonna need more than that.

Bull follows Krem’s swift gait, stretching his legs to keep the distance between them minimal. It only takes him a few steps to realize Krem leads them to the sparring ring down in the lower court, and this relaxes him somehow; most things make more sense in the ring. If Krem is gonna beat the shit out of him or not his another question. Bull could handle that. Shit, that’d probably work well on both ends.

But as they stand in the ring, just staring at each other, Bull thinks he’s not getting hit with anything but words and feeling and that is _so_ much harder.

“You taught me the structure of a good fight,” Krem begins, pacing the width of the ring. He removes his pair of leather gloves and sticks them in his back pocket, his hands tawny and dry as he rubs them together. “You showed me how a battlefield was like a sparring ring. When it was good to keep to boundary and how to break those boundaries when need be. You taught me most everything I know. I was proud of that.”

Bull has things to say, but he bites his lip and waits. He fidgets; folds his arms and realizes that its domineering, puts his hands on his hips but then, that’s demanding.

At his sides, his arms feel like weights.

“Never seen you so unsure,” Krem notes with a twitch of brow. “Never seen you out of it. And you’ve been out of it, chief.”

They both start then, at the mistake. Fuck, it feels so good to hear, even if on accident. Even if Krem scowls.

“The rest of the boys don’t really know what to think. Skinner wanted to stab you. Still wants to stab you, I think. Rocky and Stitches have been as quiet as Grim, which is saying something. Dalish cried. They don’t want to talk about it. They want me to do it, and I think that’s fine. And I want to do it myself. Never seen Dalish cry, Bull.”

“I know what I did,” Bull says slowly, wiping his palms on his pants. He looks around the dark ring and sees practice equipment stacked neatly in the four corners. The ropes that square off the space smell like hemp, freshly oiled. A couple stools stacked on top of each other rise like a wooden specter to Krem’s right.

To passers-by, it may well seem like they’re two men about to engage in some late night, practice ass-kicking. And that’d be so much easier than listening to how he’s hurt the people he needs most. Especially now.

“I know you know what you did,” Krem says dully. “You always know. _You always know_ , that’s your thing. Caring is the bit that’s always been beyond you.”

“If you’re looking for a heartfelt spill of feelings…I’m not quite at that point in whatever is happening to me,” Bull says apologetically, shrugging. “I know what I did and how it has changed me. It _has_ changed me, Krem, already. I don’t quite know what I am right now.”

“Tal-Vashoth,” Krem offers, raising his eyebrow. “A bald-faced rejection of the Qun you loved so much. Turncoat, traitor on both sides.”

Every one of them a stab in an open wound, and every one of them true. Bull sighs heavily, but he doesn’t lower is gaze. Krem isn’t trying to hurt him, he doesn’t think. Krem is trying to bring him to something. That’s his thing: always pushing Bull in subtle ways, laying the truth out like a Ben-Hassrath agent, or a Seeker. Always demanding the best of Bull. Part of the way he gives his life to Bull every day, is trying to keep Bull honest.

That’s actually really funny.

“I am all of those things,” Bull agrees, “and I’m a bunch of things that I don’t yet know how to name. And I’m sorry, Krem. To you in particular, and to the boys. I wanna make it right.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“Yeah well, it hasn’t stopped being true.” Bull shrugs. He doesn’t know what else to give Krem but this. It’s all he has that makes sense to him; very little else but fucking, fighting, the usual, makes sense to him. Things that were part of his act that are no longer part of his act, things that he does with no ulterior motive. He has no image to uphold, no games to play but his own.

Right now, he just doesn’t want to go mad.

 _You’re just tired, Iron Bull._ Kimani’s voice slips through his head. _Fatigued. You can fix that._

“I could tell you all everything,” Bull offers, the idea on his mind and on his tongue at the same time, a burst of inspiration. “From the jump. Everything I was ordered, I planned, when it changed, what it means. What it meant,” he corrects himself. “And what we can be- what The Chargers can be- without my superiors. Without a Ben-Hassrath leader. I can give that, if you all want.”

Krem frowns, but it is contemplative. Bull can see the telltale signs of “yes” on his face, the way he licks his lips when he likes a suggestion. But he’s holding out on Bull. Bull can wait.

“Well, _I_ sure as fuck want to know all that.”

Both men turn to Grim’s rare voice, shocked. Grim’s arms are folded over his chest, his hair a bit disheveled- most likely from a drunk Dalish ruffling it too much.

“Yeah, I think I would, too.” Rocky joins him, twirling his mustache. “Skinner sent us to see. She’s got her hands full with Dalish.”

Grim grunts.

“Hey, guys,” Bull says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Hey.”

“Just so you know, Krem had to talk me down from no less than two-and no more than five- attempts to blow you back to Qunandar in pieces,” Rocky says, frowning. “That was a bullshit move you fucked up on. Glad you fucked up.”

Bull huffs. “Yeah. Me, too.”

Rocky stares him down a moment before nodding. “I guess you must be. Heard you’re out of the big, horned, murder club.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Bull chuckles. His chest hurts a little, but it _is_ kind of funny.

“Killed a few of them.”

“Yeah, I did. Had to.”

Rocky nods some more, like this all makes sense. “So what, you’re all alone now, huh. No more letters. You liked your letters.”

No, no more letters; Bull swallows. “I did.”

“Yeah,” Rocky grunts. He turns his gaze to Krem, and shrugs. “Bastard’s right pitiful at this point, Krem. What are the Chargers if not a charitable organization?”

Krem scoffs. “We charge for our services, Rocky.”

“And he’s offering payment. Information is indeed a currency, boy. Even I know this. Besides, I’m tired of your grouching. Baby Bull needs his daddy back, still got a few things to learn ‘fore you can think about being Chief yourself.” The dwarf grins, waggling his eyebrows. The glee is only for Krem, who goes red and scowly. “Not to mention it’ll make Dalish happy. Dalish is happy, Skinner is happy. Don’t know about you, but I can’t take much more of an unhappy Skinner.”

On this, they can all agree; even a chipper Skinner is a trial most days. Bull can only imagine if Rocky’d wanted to kill him five times, Skinner was at least double that.

But this is good; this is hopeful. Already, Bull can already feel the ground solidifying beneath his feet.

Krem sighs, showy and loud. But he relents.

“Lavellan is sending us to break up some ruckus in the valley before she makes her way to Halamshiral.”

Bull nods. “Yeah, I know.”

“’Course you do. Forgot who I’m talking to that quick,” Krem smirks. “Then you know the drill.”

Relief. “Seeing as I handcrafted the drill,” Bull says, shrugging as he exits the ring. He thinks this is good, that he leaves first, let them ruminate on this and decide. It’s all on them. He’ll take what they give him and be fucking grateful. “I’ll be there and ready to roll.”

“Uh huh.” Krem watches him go, arms folded.

Bull has to admit, he’s proud of the kid. It takes a lot to hold strong like that. He knows Rocky threw him a bone and for that, he is ever-grateful. And proud of Krem all the more.

***

Down in the valley is easy work. Not so easy letting Krem take the helm, but Bull does what he has to do. The rest of the Chargers are hesitant at first, but they’ve spoken about it, agreed on it in some capacity. Skinner doesn’t acknowledge him, but Dalish does and that’s a start. Rocky claps him on the arm, a silent good luck, before they all get to work. They just need to clear up some more of the templar-mage skirmishes they like to bleed into the parts of the Hinterland where folks are just trying to live their lives beneath the green-split sky. Bull isn’t even sure what they’re fighting for at this point, but it doesn’t matter; those who won’t cut it out get cut down. Helps that most of them make the first move, emboldened by whatever righteous purpose they think that they’re about.

Whatever. They die easily enough, and Bull’s head feels clearer than it has in weeks. Since the giant kill, at least.

Damn, he feels good. He keeps a bit separate from the rest of them even in battle, gives them their space to work around him, but he still feels good working in his group again. He had to have known subconsciously that this band of brigands were good for him. Like Krem says, he always knows. It’s his thing.

Krem leads them back to camp, which is just a skip away from the Inquisition camp Bull remembers pitching months before. Up near the waterfall, they can almost pretend the world isn’t falling apart around them.

They eat dinner the Chargers way; loud and vulgar, together, with alcohol. Krem takes care of the paperwork and his fingers are ink-stained when he finally joins them. Bull takes a seat on the far side of the fire because he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do or what exactly they’ve spoken about. But then Rocky nods him over, and Bull lumbers over, sitting with a bit of a groan as his knee tightens up.

The chatter quiets down as Krem hails Bull, and Bull nods back. Skinner watches him as she has this whole trip, sizing him up again and again and maybe finding him smaller each time. At least, that’s how he feels. Dalish looks down at her hands whenever they meet eyes. He’s glad he’d drilled a routine into them so none of this got in the way of fighting. On the field, the Chargers were one unit, always. He did well with that.

Dalish clears her throat, and the next time they meet eyes she does not look away. There was very little meek about her. She is simply the sweetest of the Chargers, which says a lot for them, but not for folks at large. Bull sees a bit of that edge in her as she finds her words.

“We were told that you’ve come to explain yourself.”

Most of the time, all eyes are on him, and yet he still feels like he’s being stripped.

“Yeah,” he manages. “Whatever you all want or need to know. I owe you that at least.”

“You got that last part right,” Skinner quips, quieting when Dalish nudges her.

“That was fucked up of you, Bull,” Stitches, silent until now, says as he picks something out of his teeth. “Real shitty after all we’ve been through, Qunari or not.”

Bull nods, and it seems to be enough for Stitches at the moment. He raises an eyebrow and goes back to his dinner, a whole fucking nug roasted to crispy deliciousness, seemingly content to listen. But that was Stitches. Never talked a lot until he’d heard enough.

“So,” Bull says, setting his plate aside. Nug was gamy, and he wasn’t in the mood for much food. “Where…where do I start?”

“Maybe at the part where you decided that we were expendable,” Skinner quips, rolling her eyes over at him. “And that watching us be slaughtered would be a good use of your time.”

The rest of them nod; even Dalish, though she’s poking at Skinner again. But the Void would have to open up and swallow Skinner whole before she gave him a break. And he doesn’t want one. He can take it.

“All right,” Bull says even though a streak of fear runs through him. He doesn’t have the words. Shit, he does _not have the words_.

But he has to try.

“All right, yeah. I guess I’ll start there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know your thinks :) We're moving towards the close of this little "What If" AU.


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